5 Minutes with… Marie-Lise Campeau
A strategic and innovative leader with a proven track record of managing agency operations, clients, people and culture, Marie-Lise Campeau is a trusted marketing expert and business partner capable of building long-term and profitable business relationships. Presently serving as president of Ogilvy Canada, her advertising career spans over 21 years, during which she’s held a plethora of roles including CCO (also at Ogilvy), executive vice president, business operations at Sid Lee, and COO at Lowe Roche.
With a client list including the likes of Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Home Depot, the Heart & Stroke Foundation, Maple Leaf Foods, and YellowPages, Marie-Lise is always drawing on her creative, client-side and agency experience to succeed in an incredibly competitive mark/com environment - earning the trust of clients while simultaneously rejuvenating and rebuilding agency operations and culture. She’s also a staunch advocate for embracing change and staying current, allowing her to solve critical business issues, drive results, and be recognised across award shows ranging from Cannes Lions and the Marketing Awards to the One Show and the Clios.
LBB’s Josh Neufeldt sat down with Marie-Lise to discuss all this and more, going over everything from her first year as president to her views on the industry’s latest trends.
LBB> How did you get started in advertising? Tell us your story!
Marie-Lise> I have always had a passion for creativity and any kind of art in general. In school, I studied everything from photography to film, journalism to advertising, and marketing to business. I suppose you could say my first ‘industry’ role came as a teen, when I took a position shooting ads as an intern assistant cameraman, which ultimately led to different roles at the National Film Board of Canada.
By my late twenties, I knew I wanted to work in an ad agency, though I had no idea what role. Through the connections of one of my former teachers, I was able to land a role in client service, where business met creativity. I fell in love with solving business problems through creativity and collaborating with colleagues and clients in the process. I knew then that I wanted to lead an agency. And, here I am!
LBB> You’ve been president at Ogilvy Canada for just over a year now! How has your experience been thus far? And what are you hoping to achieve in both 2023 and beyond?
Marie-Lise> Ogilvy’s purpose is creating impact. We have been doing it for 70 years. My goal is to create immediate, long-lasting impact for our employees and clients with a strong focus on the work.
We are continually improving the creative stories we tell with clients. Our creative has significantly stepped up with the recent work on Dove, TD Bank, Cadbury, and Absolut. Everyone is excited about pushing it even further to find the surprising and interesting brand stories we can tell with our clients.
I take pride in having integrated all the offices and employees across Canada as one agency - one team. We are forming a strong national leadership team with recent global and Canadian hires: Francesco Grandi as chief creative officer, Jeremy Daly as chief strategy officer, and Chris Perron as chief client officer.
My focus is on supporting and enabling the national executive team and the agency to continue to deliver impactful work with our current clients. Enabling them means listening to what is working and what is not working, and finding creative solutions to make us better as a team. The same applies to listening to our clients and providing immediate solutions.
LBB> Before taking on the president role, you were CCO. How do the two positions compare? And have there been any challenges you’ve had to adjust to in that time?
Marie-Lise> As CCO, working with all of our clients and managing the entire client service team was both demanding and rewarding. As president, the scale of managing Ogilvy Canada and the vision required is on a different level. Many of the needed skills and points of experience are similar, but the president’s role is even more about working with everyone in Canada and abroad to bring the best to every client and brand.
LBB> You’ve mentioned creating strong agency operations and culture, in order to succeed in a very competitive environment. What does this look like, and how are you achieving these goals in practice?
Marie-Lise> To have strong agency operations, we don’t spend time trying to figure out HOW to get great work. Instead, we use all our effort to create the best work and have more impact. Our culture of shared values helps amplify our efforts, allowing us to create better work and more impact.
LBB> What does it take to build a strong agency-brand relationship in today’s day and age?
Marie-Lise> Building a strong relationship today takes the same combination of strategy, creative, client service and delivery. What’s new is the agility required across all the teams to be flexible to the specific opportunity. The pace today and the necessity to always be nimble are very different.
I also believe that a long-lasting partnership benefits clients as much as agencies. It should be a collective ambition to stay partners for a long period of time. It creates better work and has more impact with stable talent and trust. You have each other’s backs. It is better for the clients, the talent, and the businesses.
LBB> What are your main aims and ambitions for your work? How would you define your leadership style, and what factors have played the biggest influence on this style?
Marie-Lise> My ambition is to make a positive impact for Ogilvy Canada employees and clients. This includes having a positive impact on people’s lives at the agency, a positive impact on our client business, and also the culture, as a key partner interacting daily with their staff. Moreover, however, I want to have a positive impact on society. Our Dove work, like ‘Injectable Billboard’ and ‘Cost of Beauty’ speaks to that.
My leadership style is selfless. I am who I am today, I do what I do today, because of my mentors who sincerely cared for me. I purposely wanted to be like them.
LBB> As president, how would you describe your values? And how do you go about reflecting them on a day to day basis?
Marie-Lise> Interestingly, my personal values align with Ogilvy’s values, which explain why it feels very natural for me to lead in this agency. At Ogilvy, we like to say: ‘Do the right thing. Do the best work of our lives. Do it together’. Similarly, when making decisions throughout my career, I always ask myself if it is the right thing to do at the time – evaluating if there are more upsides and downsides to the decision - or when it is a difficult decision, if it would have less negative impact on all of us. That it benefits the work.
Building on this, the reason I am in this profession is for the love of the work. I stay close to the work we do. I am an active president. I thrive on always doing even more impactful work than what came before. And we are in a people business. The people are what make Ogilvy. There is nothing I do day to day that is not about teamwork with employees and clients.
LBB> You’ve mentioned a love of embracing change and staying current. Do you have any strategies for achieving this consistently? And how do you apply the latest trends and insights to the work you do?
Marie-Lise> I read a lot. I also consume a lot of business media, across Canadian and US markets, as well as internationally. It’s important to stay current on our clients’ business. Recent literature has also spanned topics that are important to employees, like mindset on flexibility, working remotely, and how the pandemic’s effects continue to ripple through the workforce.
AI is a topic that can’t be avoided today, and to that end, I believe in keeping up to date on the ideas and issues impacting our industry and our clients. It’s always important to be open to new ideas. I never assume that what worked before is the right solution the next time. Reading broadens your perspective and sense of problem-solving.
When it comes to staying current and insightful, there’s also no replacement for meeting and talking to people outside of advertising who are leading in different fields. It’s a great way to train yourself to see the world with new eyes. And of course, my Ogilvy colleagues – constant innovators who are pushing the boundaries of creativity and strategy in culture.
LBB> Finally, what helps you destress after a long day at work?
Marie-Lise> Swimming and skiing as much as I can. And enjoying a delicious dinner with my husband and son (I am French after all)!
